1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a record media written with a data structure, used in recognizing specific users, in hardware such as a robot, etc., a method for recognizing a user by using a data structure written in the record media, and a method for accessing to a user identification database in the user identification software component application programming interface (API) and an error handling method in the user identification software component API. Among the user identification elements, in particular, the present invention relates to a method for building a database of image data relating to the user's clothes, and a performance evaluation of a vision-based recognizer, which is means for recognizing the user's image information relating to the clothes.
2. Description of the Related Art
From the 1980's, the market of an industrial robot has rapidly grown on the basis of the development of labor-intensive industries, such as a car and electronics industry, etc., and the market of the industrial robot has expanded in full-scale since the robot was significantly utilized in manufacturing plants. However, since the market of the industrial robot has reached puberty in the early 1990's, the market of the industrial robot has become sluggish. Therefore, this sluggish market paved the way for seeking the formation of a new field of a robot industry and the technical development thereof. Recently, as the social requests for a housewife's daily work or a life-support have been expanded and a society is rapidly aging, this new field of robots has been developing into a service robot type for actively coping with the changing circumstance and providing a very useful service for a human being, by moving away from the idea of the industrial robot doing simply repetitive work in an existing fixed circumstance. In particular, this field of robots has been forming the market of a new robot such as an intelligent service robot on the basis of information and communication technology together with the remarkable development of semiconductors, as well as computer and communication technology. For example, the commercialization of an intelligent service robot starting from a pet robot A of S company paved the way for expanding the recognition of roles as entertainment and a companion of a human being, by escaping from the concept that a robot is used only in the field to replace human labor.
The domestic intelligent service robot industry is releasing elementary intelligent robot products such as an entertainment robot and a home robot, etc., from more than twenty venture companies. Meanwhile, large enterprises are attempting the independently technical development of the intelligent robot together with the technical development of intelligent home appliances. S company has developed a toy robot ANTOR, a home robot iComar™, and iMaro™, a successor thereto so that it is preparing commercialization thereof within one to two years. L Company has released a cleaning robot Roboking™.
In particular, large enterprises are expected to overcome the disparity in technology level with the existing small scale leading enterprises and to lead in this field, preceded by the technologies for relatively various business fields and the abundant research personnel and capital.
The domestic industrial robot, ranking fourth in the world production-wise, has been helpful in strengthening competitiveness of manufacturing industries such as semiconductors and cars, etc. However, the domestic industrial robot has lower competitiveness than that of advanced countries due to high dependence on foreign technology and core components of the domestic industrial robot and the existing industry are currently losing growth momentum due to recent industry depression. Since 2000 many small or mid-sized venture companies are developing robots for home, entertainment, education and service, etc., for commercialization, according to the world-wide trend of robot industry, and Robot World Cup and I'REX, etc., are well established for domestic applications so that the possibility of industrialization for the domestic intelligent robot is gradually increased. D Company has released a humanoid robot with 16 joints, LUCY™, and a plurality of robots for education and research, by using low-cost RC servo motor, R Company has released growth toy robots in a mouse shape, DIDI™ and TITI™, and a gladiator robot for combat. Microrobot INC. has been commercializing a robot kit for education and a robot for games, and has been developing a module-type robot as a development task of a next generation robot technology. Woori technology INC. has developed and exhibited a guiding and cleaning robot for home use, ISAAC™, and has released a cleaning robot. It has also been developing a public exhibition robot as an upcoming technology. Y Company has commercialized a soccer robot, VICTO™, has developed educational robots for home use, Pegasus and iRobi™, and has been preparing for the commercialization thereof. H Company has commercialized a robot for research and a soccer robot, and has also developed a robot for national defense and a cleaning robot, OTTORO™. And other many enterprises have been contributing to industrialization centering on educational and toy robots.
According to IT New Growth Engine Planning Report, an intelligent service robot has been named a ubiquitous robotic companion (hereinafter, referred to as ‘URC’) and is made to promote industry revitalization and technology development based on business model. Herein, ‘URC’ is defined as “a robot for being with me when, wherever and always and providing a service necessary for me” so that various functions of high degree or services can be provided by introducing the URC concept by adding a network to the existing concept of a robot, and in which transition and human interface are remarkably improved, such that the possibility that various services and pleasures are provided at more inexpensive cost on the user side is expected to be largely expanded. In terms of a URC, it should be connected with network infra, thus having intelligence. And, in view of mobility, it is further considered to include hardware mobility as well as software mobility.
The URC connecting a robot with a network has been proposing new possibility of overcoming the limitation in terms of maintaining and of seeking the growth of a robot industry. In an existing robot, all required functions and technical burdens are resolved in the existing robot itself so that the technical limitation and the problem of cost occur, however, the cost can be reduced and the usefulness can be improved by sharing the functions with the outside through a network. In other words, the functional possibility resulting from the development of IT technology is added to a robot so that a pro-human human interface is secured, having a more free shape and various mobility, such that it is able to be developed into a robot industry on the basis of the people oriented technology.
It is necessary for such a pro-human robot to have an ability to recognize a person interacting with the robot. The robot can recognize a user through a variety of information by using a voice or an image and at this time, each method constitutes one component and a robot application program can recognize a user by using a plurality of components. The company providing the components provides the method capable of recognizing a user in an API function library form by using their own peculiar method and technology, wherein if the functions of the function library are defined in a different form according to companies, the robot application program has a problem to modify programs whenever component suppliers are changed. After all, the overlapping development of the robot application program is inevitable and thus, it is considered to be one of the major factors to hamper the development of the robot technology.
As the most representative method to solve the problems as above, the components may be used with only minimum change, without modifying the robot application program by preparing a common standard of API functions of the components supplied by the companies. In other words, as shown in FIG. 1, the standard of API functions 102 of the components provided by various companies is set so that it may be used in the robot application program 101, even if any component is used.
In the API for recognizing a user, in particular, there is data having information for the recognition of the user so that it is possible to recognize specific users by comparing the data. The form of data as above should be defined in a common form for various components.
Also, in the API for recognizing a user, all functions should report the results of proper success or error depending on the operation or not of the function. Therefore, it should prevent the confusion from occurring by determining kinds of errors to be generated for each component and unifying the definitions for the errors.
In general, a robot captures information by using a voice or an image in order to recognize a person interacting with the robot, in particular, a robot apparatus or a viewing camera such as an intelligent service robot recognizes a person or a thing by capturing image information so that an image identification method for finding and pursuing a person in an image and a system thereof have been actively developing.
The information of a person such as a face, a gait, a height etc., is used to recognize and pursue the person. In particular, person's clothes having characteristics to be standardized in view of colors and shapes, can be easily recognized from the captured image so that it can be useful in recognizing and pursuing a person.
For the above reasons, various methods using the image information of clothes have recently been proposed for recognizing and pursuing a person. However, the various methods proposed as above do not have a common standard to objectively evaluate a performance of recognizing a person by using the image information of clothes, as such having difficulty in comparing the performance.
Therefore, the standard or the method to objectively evaluate the performance of methods to recognize a person by using the image information of clothes is necessary.